When the door finally closed behind Vael and his frantic energy faded down the hall, the room went quiet again.
Not peaceful. Not relaxed.
Just… quiet.
Malerion stood there for a moment, letting the silence settle around him.
And then he felt it.
A faint vibration deep inside his chest no, deeper than that.
Not muscle ,heartbeat.
Something beneath all of it.
That hadn't been there before the breakthrough.
Something waking up.
He exhaled slowly.
"...So it begins."
Alastor's voice slipped into his mind, soft enough to be little more than a breath:
"You've noticed it too."
"Hard not to," Malerion murmured. "It's like another pulse."
"Not a pulse."
There was no smugness this time.
Just observation.
"A boundary."
A boundary.
Yes.
That was the right word.
Not a spell ,technique.
A perimeter that moved with him subtle, quiet, instinctive.
A Domain.
His Domain.
Letting It Open for the First Time
Malerion closed his eyes and allowed whatever that boundary was to expand.
It wasn't dramatic.
No earthquake.
Demonic aura ripping through the walls.
It was more like the air thickened around him.
More like the shadows sharpened.Every sound gained direction and weight.
The world leaned toward him not in submission, but in recognition.
And the Domain settled around him like a second skin.
Alastor hummed thoughtfully.
"It suits you."
"You say that like you know how it works."
"I don't."
The honesty was refreshing.
"I only know what you know. But I can tell it's not hellborn. It's yours alone."
Right.
His creation.
system.
Not demonic ,Goetia, Overlord.
Just him.
Closing It Again
Letting the Domain open had been surprisingly natural.
Closing it…
that was harder.
He pictured it folding inward like drawing breath back into his chest.
Like tightening a muscle he'd never used before.
And… slowly…
The air softened, shadows relaxed ,world returned to normal.
Domain gone.
Hidden.
Silent.
Malerion nodded to himself.
Good.
He would need that control.
Especially if he wanted to train with other people inside Sin Rouge without accidentally scrambling their senses.
Testing It in the Field
He headed toward the training warehouse, passing by familiar smells of metal, smoke, and Quill's questionable chemicals.
Voices echoed faintly:
Skit complaining.
Bit laughing.
Dreg barking orders.
Liza sharpening blades.
Quill cursing at some machine.
Normal.
Comfortable.
His family whether anyone said it out loud or not.
When he opened the warehouse door, the whole inner circle looked up at once.
Dreg sniffed the air like a hound.
"S…something feels off about you," he growled.
Liza tilted her head.
"Your… aura is different."
Quill squinted.
"Did you explode anything?"
"No."
"That's worrying."
Malerion stepped into the center of the room.
"I need to test something."
Skit's ears flattened.
"Oh no."
Bit mirrored him.
"Oh YES."
Dreg crossed his arms.
"What kind of test?"
Malerion didn't answer with words.
He opened the Domain.
Not fully.
Just enough for them to feel it.
Enough to let it brush against the edges of the room.
The reaction was immediate.
Dreg blinked hard, jaw tightening.
"My instincts they're not… syncing. I move, and the world moves wrong."
Skit attempted a sidestep and stumbled the opposite direction.
"Hey HEY WHY AM I DRIFTING?!"
Bit threw a jab.
It landed on absolutely nothing.
"THE ROOM IS CHEATING."
Liza stood absolutely still, eyes narrowed, analyzing every shift.
"This isn't energy or mind magic," she murmured.
"It's perception interference. It changes how we interpret movement."
Donnie was already writing notes at high speed.
"Effect: directional distortion. Timing delay. Spatial misalignment. Potentially catastrophic in combat."
Quill pushed his glasses up, staring as if the air had personally offended him.
"It's overriding local reference points. Not illusions actual interpretive bias. Movement feels like it's being translated to a different axis."
Malerion took two simple steps.
Skit and Bit crashed into each other.
Dreg tried to retreat his body went forward instead.
Liza hissed under her breath.
"Turn it off before someone breaks a bone."
He closed the Domain.
Everything snapped back to normal.
The room went silent except for Skit and Bit arguing about who hit whom harder.
Dreg flexed his fingers experimentally.
"Boss… that's not a technique."
Malerion raised an eyebrow.
"No?"
"That's a battlefield rewrite."
Liza nodded once, serious.
"If you master this, no demon below Overlord level will be able to fight you in melee."
Quill swallowed.
"And that's just the first layer, isn't it?"
Malerion didn't lie.
"Yes."
The room fell quiet.
Really quiet.
Skit whispered:
"…We're gonna survive so much shit because of this."
Bit nodded enthusiastically.
"Or die horribly during training!"
Dreg slapped him.
"That's not helping."
The First Step of Many
Malerion looked down at his hand calm, steady, no tremor.
He could still feel the Domain curled quietly within him, waiting for the next command.
Not hungry or chaotic.
Just ready.
The Fifth Ring wasn't just stronger energy.
It was a shift in how power existed around him.
A shift in how he interacted with the world.
Shift in how the world reacted to him.
And this was only the beginning.
He wasn't just growing stronger.
Becoming a new kind of force entirely.
Something Hell had no rules for.
And as he looked at his inner circle bruised, confused, exhausted, but still loyal he felt something settle deep inside him.
Determination.
Resolve.
Purpose.
And Domain
And he intended to master it.
Every inch of it.